Elder’s Will: Wednesday Excerpt

I’m beginning a new series of blog posts. Rather than my usual musings, instead I will post a short excerpt from the novel on every Wednesday from now until, well, until I run out of things to post, I guess. Hopefully this book will be published by then! Without further ado:

Here is a scene near the beginning of the novel. On his first test at his exclusive university, Eric scored the highest grade in his class … by a wide margin. To him, this wasn’t a surprise. After all, Eric’s academic track record is one of his proudest accomplishments.

*

I thought that success would buy me something. I was right. Because it was the first test score we received publicly as students at the University, that grade earned me two labels: bookworm and teacher’s pet. The former was not altogether untrue, though I did not like to admit it. The latter made me mad for its falsity, though I suspect that such was the intent. Nonetheless I told myself I was at the University to learn and not to make friends. I had not spent my youth earning academic accolades just to fall victim to puerile insults. I had not done all of my schoolwork promptly under threat of double chores from my parents for nothing. It would have been nice to be accepted in the community of students, but it was not a prerequisite for graduating at the head of the class. Plus, I had endured nicknames my entire life. What difference would one or two more make?

I persevered for a week, listening to my new names with gritted teeth, until the second of three tests. Surely another triumph would garner me respect.

How wrong I was. Master Carlson lambasted me for a good five minutes before handing me my sixty-two percent score. I dropped the papers from my fumbling fingers for all the class to see.

“Disappointing, Chadwick. Grown complacent already?” Master Carlson had ended, shaking his bald head at me. I had no response. His words stuck sharper because of the truth within them.

I met with confrontation the minute class ended. “Lost some luster did you, golden child?” said Sidney Malorne, the roundball team captain and the loudest of the voices that chortled their way through class from the rear-most row of seats. “Did the bookworm lose its way in the library?”